Vinegar: Fragile as a Balloon

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Dear Reader,

One of my favorite quotes comes from Erykah Badu – on one of her cds she introduces a new song (The Fantagalistic Tyrone, I believe)and she says, “Now keep in mind, I’m an artist and I am sensitive about my shit.”

Did you catch that?

“Now keep in mind, I’m an artist and I am sensitive about my shit.”

So true, so true.

Us artists (you guys who know me best know I am making a face as I refer to myself as an “artist”, but hey, progress, not perfection, right? Not long ago I would NEVER have been able to call myself an artist at all!) are sensitive folks.

I appreciated a moment at the Poetry Slam I went to last month when the MC was encouraging the audience to snap or clap or express their appreciation somehow because poets shrivel up and die if they don’t get positive feedback.

Sure, all of us, artists or not, are like that – in need of positivity. But poets and other artists are more desperate for it. We shrivel at a much faster rate.

And then we are no fun to be around.

So, the point of this post, Dear, Dear Sympathetic Reader, is that I am shriveled today.

It doesn’t take much. One ill-advised rejection from a poetry submission and my entire poetic path of good intentions is washed away like chalk on the sidewalk. I struggle to keep my chin up – to believe that the rest of my grand poetic plan will happen. To know that there are other markets out there, that I will be able to make the time to submit to them, to know in my bones that this is not a bad omen – that other poems that are hanging out there in submission limbo waiting to be loved will be just that…loved. To have faith that my path is well-tended and worthwhile and that I will continue to thrive as an artist and poet.